Camp Life in the Woods and the Tricks of Trapping and Trap Making eBook

The Gopher is a great pest to western cultivators,
and by its root feeding and undermining propensities
does extensive injury to crops generally. They
may be successfully trapped in the following manner:
Strike a line between the two most recent earth mounds,
and midway between them remove a piece of the sod.
By the aid of a trowel or a sharp stick the burrow
may now be reached. Insert your hand in the tunnel
and enlarge the interior sufficiently to allow the
introduction of No. (0) steel trap. Set the trap
flatly in the bottom of the burrow, and then laying
a piece of shingle or a few sticks across the excavation
replace the sod. Several traps may be thus set
in the burrows at considerable distances apart, and
a number of the animals thus taken. The traps
are sometimes inserted in the burrows from the hillocks,
by first finding the hole and then enlarging it by
inserting the arm and digging with the hand beneath.
The former method, however, is preferable.

The skin of the Gopher may be pulled off the body
either by cutting up the hind less, as described in
reference to the Fox, [Page 207] or by making the
incision from the lower jaw down the neck, as decided
for the muskrat, a simple board stretcher being used.

THE MOLE.

Of all the mammalia the Mole is entitled to take the
first place in the list of burrowers. This extraordinary
creature does not merely dig tunnels in the ground
and sit at the end of them, as is the case with many
animals, but it forms a complicated subterranean dwelling
place with chambers, passages and other arrangements
of wonderful completeness. It has regular roads
leading to its feeding grounds; establishes a system
of communication as elaborate as that of a modern
railway, or, to be more correct, as that of the subterranean
network of the sewers of a city. It is an animal
of varied accomplishments. It can run tolerably
fast, it can fight like a bull-dog, it can capture
prey under or above ground, it can swim fearlessly,
and it can sink wells for the purpose of quenching
its thirst. Take the mole out of its proper sphere,
and it is awkward and clumsy as the sloth when placed
on level ground, or the seal when brought ashore.
Replace it in the familiar earth and it becomes a
different being, full of life and energy, and actuated
by a fiery activity which seems quite inconsistent
with its dull aspect and seemingly inert form.

We all know that the mole burrows under the ground,
raising at intervals the little hillocks or “mole
hills” with which we are so familiar; but most
of us little know the extent or variety of its tunnels,
or that the animal works on a regular system and does
not burrow here and there at random. How it manages
to form its burrows in such admirably straight lines,
is not an easy problem, because it is always done
in black darkness, and we know of nothing which can
act as a guide to the animal. As for ourselves
and other eye-possessing creatures, the feat of walking
in a straight line with closed eyelids is almost an
impossibility, and every swimmer knows the difficulty
of keeping a straight course under water, even with
the use of his eyes.